The left-of-centre party, Vision Vancouver has won the Vancouver's civil election by a landslide with the promise of ending homelessness. Mayor-elect Gregor Robertson has pledged to solve homelessness by 2015.

"My first order of business is to call an emergency task force on homelessness and to focus on how we get people off the street as quickly as possible in to temporary housing or shelter," said Robertson.

A report by the Saskatoon Health Region looks at poverty-reduction policy and programs in other places to determine how Saskatchewan could lift people out of poverty and reduce the health gap between the rich and poor. The report makes forty-six recommendations and how they were implemented in other jursediction including:

• Set Measurable Goals to Reduce Poverty
  • Reduce poverty in children from 20% to 2% in five years
  • Reduce poverty in all residents from 17% to 10% in five years

  In Ireland, a target was set in 1997 to reduce the percentage of the population living in poverty from 15% to 10% in ten years. Within four years, the poverty rate had already fallen from 15% to 5%. The success observed in Ireland was attributed to the setting of a goal; followed by changes in social programs including increases in social assistance payments, then educational programs and then employment initiatives.

• Ensure No Child Lives in Poverty
  • Parents with children who are on social assistance should have their shelter allowances and their adult allowances (i.e., food, clothing) doubled in order to raise children to the LICO.

  Although every resident is important, the prioritization of children was a key strategy within poverty reduction plans in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Quebec.

In today's Vancouver civil election, the issues of homelessness and social housing are being buried beneath the controversy around a leak of $100 million dollar loan to the financers of the Vancouver Olympic Village.

A promised two percent raise in welfare rates in Ontario will kick in for December cheques but according to an article in The Star this will boost payments to a level recommended in 1988. The two percent increase gives single people only $5 more to spend on basic necessities.

On Halloween, the Downtown Eastside Resident's Association supported a group of homeless campers who had had their camp torn down by the city of Vancouver. The group had lived in tents on the site for several months. The campers went back to the site after some confrontation with the city, by the evening all the campers were given rooms with new beds at the Gastown Hotel.

A new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) analyzes BC's carbon tax for different income levels and finds that the government needs to change the tax in order to ensure people in different income groups pay a fair share.

Much of what is being said about the global economic crisis is coming from above -- from government leaders, the heads of banks and financial institutions -- from those who helped create the crisis. But it will likely be the poor and working poor who be most effected by the crisis. The following stories talk about how it is even more important now for national and international governments to focus on poverty.

A new report from Toronto Public Health links health and income, and shows that people with low income experience greater risk of illness, higher rates of disease and death at an earlier age than people with higher income. The report shows the relationship between income and health in Toronto is not just about the extremes of wealth and poverty. Most of the indicators show a gradient of health relative to income such that health status improves through each income increment.

Twenty-five years ago, Canada was among the first countries to sign the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) treaty. The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) watched as the UN CEDEW Committee in Geneva grilled the Canadian government on Canada's failure to live up to the treaty. Some of the issues the committee brought up were domestic violence and child custody; shelters for victims of domestic violence; resident permits for victims of trafficking; co-incarceration of young women and young men; social assistance; suicide rates among Aboriginal youth; child death among Aboriginal people; male involvement in the defense of women’s rights; missing murdered Aboriginal women; HIV and AIDS among Aboriginal women; representation of women in the workplace; and availability of legal aid.

Politicians, police, advocates and legal professionals have been responding to the BC Supreme court ruling that allows homeless people to erect tents and structures in Victoria parks. The Victoria police have cracked down on homeless people trying to sleep in public parks. Anti-poverty activists and lawyers have applauded the ground-breaking ruling while municipal and provincial politicians have denounced the ruling.

Two Lower Mainland ridings, Vancouver-Burrard and Vancouver-Fariview, are up for a by-election this week after their ridings were vacated by MLAs running in other elections. If you live in either of these ridings you can vote on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. The economy and housing are the two major issues up for debate in this by-election. The West End advocacay group, Renters at Risk has been rallying for changes to the Residential Tenancy Act and protection for tenants.

The BC Supreme Court has judged that Victoria's bylaws that prevent homeless people from erecting temporary shelters in city parks violates the Charter. The judge found that because of overcrowding at Victoria's homeless shelters, hundreds of homeless people have been forced to sleep outside. The ruling says that sleeping in a tent or under another structure is not a public safety issue but rather a basic human dignity and that Victoria's bylaws prevented these people from protecting themselves from the elements which could lead to harmful health risks.

Homelessness Action Week is held in communities across BC and the Yukon between October 12-19, 2008.

• Find out what is happening in your community: Homeless Action Week Events
• Streams of Justice is holding a Homeless Action Week Vigil

With growing concern over the economy, advocates across the country claim that federal candidates are not addressing those who will be hardest hit by growing economic uncertainty. Since the federal government cut housing programs in 1993, Canada is the only G8 country without a national housing strategy. Advocates are calling on the federal government to fund affordable housing, and social services especially with the increased threat of a recession. A paper by the Wellesley Institute, argues that strong public systems and increased public investment in health and social development do not impede economic growth but are key ingredients for economic growth and stability.

PEI raised its minimum wage from $7.75 to $8.00 but advocates and poverty organizations say that it is still not enough for the basic necessities. A Statistics Canada report says average weekly wages on PEI total only $644.32, well behind the national average of $791.48.

Last month the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCPA) surveyed the hotels in the Downtown Eastside and found 486 privately owned empty housing units. They did not count the many empty government-owned that may be ready to open soon. CCPA has proposed that the city and BC Housing should get short term leases with private hotel owners to upgrade and manage these buildings as shelters for the homeless. Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Peter Ladner has rejected this proposal but Vision Vancouver candidate, Gregor Robertson expressed support for the CCAP proposal.

Indigenous women's organizations are calling on all candidates in the upcoming federal election to stop the violence against indigenous women and children and to uphold and promote the rights of all Indigenous women and girls whether they live on reserve or in other communities ("No More Stolen Sisters: Open letter to all candidates in the 2008 Federal election" in PDF). Over 500 indigenous women are either missing or murdered in Canada and many of these cases remain unsolved. In September, the Walk4Justice, a 5000 km trek across Canada to raise awareness of the high number of missing and murdered aboriginal women, concluded in Ottawa with a rally and by presenting a petition to Parliament calling for action on the unsolved cases.

West Coast LEAF has put together a short educational pamphlet on family law, access to justice and specifically legal aid to be used all candidates meetings or other election events.